


A Conversation in Need

by Setcheti



Series: Conversations [5]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Misunderstandings, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5575675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Scott had just wanted to see how his captain was doing - the man had been dead, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Conversation in Need

Jim Kirk woke up from his latest unintentional nap and blinked at the windows; someone was standing in front of them. He blinked again. “Scotty?” The man jumped and turned around, showing that he was indeed Commander Montgomery Scott. Kirk pushed himself as much more upright as he could. “You should have woken me up. It’s not like I do anything but sleep all the time anyway.”

“I dare say you still need it.” Scott looked his captain over critically, not having missed the way the younger man’s arms had been shaking when he was trying to move himself up in the bed. “Those last two weeks don’t count, you know.”

Kirk made a face. “Actually, I don’t – and no one who does will talk to me about it.” He cocked his head. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? Before? I was trying not to…”

“No, but it was still a dirty trick. I’ll get you back the next time we spar,” Scott told him. “They’ve upped the requirements for self defense again, Mr. Spock is goin’ to be wipin’ the floor with all of us and pretendin’ he doesnae enjoy the hell out of it once we’re back on the ship.” The other man’s wince surprised him. “Now don’t you be tellin’ me they’ve been lyin’ to us about you bein’ fine once you get your strength back…”

“That’s what they’ve told me too, so no, I don’t think so.” Kirk still looked pained, though. “I just…I doubt they’ll be letting me anywhere near a ship once I get out of here. Nobody will say anything, so I know the inquest must have gone really, really badly.” To his surprise, the engineer went red – angry red, and the calm concern he’d been projecting heated up to match. Kirk laid a careful hand on his arm, blue eyes widening as hot, bubbling anger borne up on a wave of protective impulse flooded through him; with his shields down the sensation was indescribably intense, but not in a bad way. The impulse was directed at him, but the anger quite obviously wasn’t. “Scotty, what…?”

“He didnae tell you…that low-born Irish bastard!” Scott was absolutely seething. He looked his captain square in the eye, covering the trembling hand with his own and squeezing it. “Of course you’re goin’ back, Jim, we all are – we just have to rebuild her first. And Chekov wrote your name on the captain’s chair with radium paint, so I’ll have to replace that before you can use it again.” He moved his hand up, gripping Kirk’s shoulder. “The inquest was brutal, yes, but not on any of us. Three other members of the admiralty were in on it with Marcus, and one of them sang like a wee little birdie once someone pointed out that he was supposed to have been killed in the second attack with all the rest. The whole plan had been in the works for years, there was evidence in plenty once they knew where to look – and Lt. Uhura very nicely backed it all up for them before the original database could be erased, and gave it to a few others for safe-keepin’ at the same time.” Kirk lifted a questioning eyebrow. “The head of Starfleet Academy, someone in the British Royal Navy, and…well, and a few people in the media.”

Kirk’s blue eyes went wide again, and Scott didn’t have to be an empath to feel the edge of frightened panic in the younger man’s visible dismay. “She…the _media_? Oh my god, they can court-martial…”

“Since she released the recordin’ of Marcus admittin’ his plans for the _Enterprise_ at the same time? No, they didnae say a bloody word to her. And Commander Spock testified that we had been given orders by Admiral Marcus to go after Khan, which since Vulcans supposedly canna lie…well, that almost makes up for him kickin’ off this whole mess to start with. Sulu and Chekov got with Lt. Uhura to work on that, by the way.” The eyebrow again. “Let’s just say she wasnae any too happy that he almost got you fired and the two of them split up because you decided to save his life.” He snorted. “I think he may have been stayin’ at the ambassador’s place for a few days after she found out, that woman’s nae someone to mess with when she’s really on a rip.”

“No, no she’s not.” Kirk sank back into his pillow, feeling overwhelmed, mostly by relief. “So…they know I’m not a traitor? I’m not going to…”

“Of course you’re bloody well not!” Scott exclaimed. “Jesus Christ, Jim, even if they had believed that, do you really think we’d have let it happen? After you died to save all of us and hundreds of thousands of innocent people on Earth, you think we wouldn’t have spirited you away already if that was goin’ on?”

Kirk blinked at him; Scott tried to ignore how liquid his eyes were looking. “I thought…no one would talk about it, I didn’t know what was going on. And Pike…” He bit his lip. “He said he’d…made a mistake, thinking I was ready. Thinking I was good enough.”

“Funny, that’s not what he said in his personal journals,” Scott countered quietly, and shrugged at the newly horrified look. “She’s thorough, our communications officer. She’s got those saved down separate for you, too – she said she thought you’d want to have a copy of them.”

Kirk nodded, almost violently. “I…I would. I do.” He blinked hard a few times. “Tell her thanks for me?”

“She’ll most likely be by tonight or tomorrow to see you, but I’ll pass it along.” Scott sighed. “So I’m guessin’ the admiral didnae get to apologize like he meant to?” The nearly comical look of openmouthed shock was answer enough. “He meant to. He was proud of you, and he didnae mean what he’d said. He suspected they were listenin’, he had to make it look good for them, and then he kicked himself after for makin’ it look a bit too good. He suspected they’d been waitin’ for somethin’ like the kerfluffle Mr. Spock kicked off so they could get rid of you – and so they could get him out of their way as well.” He shook the shoulder he was holding, albeit gently, when the younger man looked unsure about that. “Jim, out of a whole roomful of Starfleet’s most experienced officers, even after bein’ told all sorts of ridiculous things by someone you trusted to be right about things like that…you still twigged to their plan within five minutes of sittin’ down at the table, and a whole handful of people who were supposed to die that night didn’t. Of course they wanted you gone – they couldnae afford to leave you be, now could they? Not if they wanted to keep goin’ the way they had been.”

Kirk was nodding slowly. He swallowed. “So…it’s all over?”

“It’s all over, everythin’s fine again. They even reinstated Pike’s rank, he was buried with full honors.” Kirk choked at that, and Scott plopped down on the side of the bed and reeled him in against a supportive shoulder. He’d been handing out a lot of hugs over the past few weeks, and at least half of the bridge crew had cried on him at least once; he’d gotten good at recognizing the signs. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “I’ll take you there to pay your respects once the bloody Irish bastard you’ve got a for a doctor lets you loose. And then we’ll go raise a glass to the man, and I’ll yell at you for him for that stupid bloody stunt you pulled.” He sniffed. “Thank you, by the way. I’m pissed as hell at you for doin’ it…but thank you.”

He let the younger man cry, knowing he probably needed it, and stayed silent until it had run its course. Then he helped him sit back against his pillow again and snagged a cloth from the bedside table for him to wipe his face off with. The cloth didn’t help get rid of the embarrassed flush that was staining the too-pale skin, but Scott just pretended he didn’t notice. “Speakin’ of rank, by the way,” he said, trying for a frown, “I couldn’t help but notice that I was still Chief Engineer of the _Enterprise_ , in spite of the fact that I handed you my resignation myself.”

Kirk blinked at him. “With everything that was going on, I never did get to make that official, sorry. And then the padds got lost…”

“I suspected that’s what had happened.” Or at least, he’d suspected that was the excuse he was going to get if he asked, anyway. “Oh well, it saved my assistant and I some trouble later, so I guess everythin’ worked out for the best.”

“Yeah, I guess it did.” And there it was, the twinkle in those blue eyes that Scott had hoped he’d see. “Although I could have done without the Sickbay vacation while the rest of you are working on our ship.”

Scott shrugged. “There’ll still be plenty to do once you’re back up and around – we probably won’t have her space-worthy again for nearly a year as it is, and they’re delayin’ sendin’ out that five-year mission until they know what the Klingons are up to. Intelligence says they don’t know it was us who landed, by the way, they think it was smugglers – so they’ve done a very nice job of wipin’ the worst of the smugglers out for us. They did notice our ships, but they thought we’d been chasin’ the smugglers and stopped at the edge of their territory. Oh, and they’re mightily impressed by ‘Captain Sulu’, he’s apparently a man after their own heart – ruthless and vicious.”

That made Kirk smile. “What does Sulu think about that? Or is that the reason Chekov painted my name on my chair?”

“Sulu’s puffed up and struttin’ like a little bantam rooster, but no, he knows which chair is his. And Chekov had his reasons in Russian when I asked him, so I just told him he had to clean it up his own self and let him be,” Scott did know the real reason, actually, but there was no way in hell he was sharing it with Jim right now – the man was still fragile, not just physically, and Scott didn’t want to explain to him how ugly things had been for the first few days after everything was over save the shouting. There had been a lot of shouting. And one of the admirals who had been shouting the loudest – later found out to be one of Marcus’s inner circle – had gotten shipped back Earthside with radiation burns that spelled out KIRK on his back after making himself at home in the captain’s chair one too many times. Chekov and Sulu had spread around some story they’d cooked up about the Curse of Kirk, attributing it to George rather than Jim once Jim was alive again, and the last Scott had heard the story had already started being whispered in the halls at the Academy: George Kirk’s ghost would attack anyone who tried to hurt his son. Jim would eventually hear about it, but hopefully by then he’d be able to laugh it off.

McCoy wasn’t going to be able to laugh off what Scott had to say to him, though. Bloody stupid bastard with his list of visiting rules on the door that had kept their captain in the dark, thinking he was up for courts martial as a traitor and everyone had abandoned him. McCoy was off somewhere at present – Scott had let himself in to see Jim, and wasn’t that a security hole he’d be seeing closed once he was done using it – but at the very least the ridiculous list was getting amended this very hour and then Scott would hunt the doctor down and give him what-for as only a Scotsman could.

The ghost of George Kirk needed living hands to work with, after all.


End file.
